From Holocene to Anthropocene

The Earth’s land surface has been ever changing in addition to vegetation cover. Before I dive into details of the three types of forests and their ecosystem services, I would like to provide an overview of the vegetation cover from the Last Glacial Maximum(LGM) and into the interglacial epoch of the Holocene.

Coming out of the glacial period, the Earth had been experiencing cold and arid conditions. According to palaeoevidence, the closed forests were far less than today and desserts were covering a larger part. The map on Figure 1 shows how the Earth is thought to be after the LGM (geoecho).

 

Figure 1: Vegetation cover after the Last Glacial Maximum (geoecho)

 

With thousands of years into the Early and Mid-Holocene, the vegetation cover changed with the warmer and wetter conditions brought about by the climate of the interglacial. The deserts were reduced and the forested areas were expanding (Figure 2) (geoecho).





Figure 2: Early Holocene vegetation cover (geoecho)



 

The map on Figure 3 shows of what is believed to be the original extend of forests in Mid-Holocene with the light green colour and the present day forest cover (Anthropocene) with the dark green colour. It is clear that the forests were reduced by half over this period although this may not be entirely due to human activity but also due to better environmental conditions during the Mid-Holocene such as higher temperature and different precipitation patterns.

 

Figure 3: The shrinking of the vegetation cover to the present day (WWF)

Yes, the vegetation cover has been changing for a long time, but what is different in the epoch of the Anthropocene? It is worth considering the causes of this change as well as the rate of change.

The fun will begin soon with my next blog post, as I will be exploring the biome of the Tropical rainforest.